The Designers 3D CAD Shootout 2000 News and Developments

Past News in reverse order :

   April 21, 2000

For Immediate Release :

Refinements Improve the Designers 3D CAD Shootout and Challenge of the Architectural CADD Cup

Refinements and developments of the Designers 3D CAD Shootout this year will be most aparent to the CADD software developers and the people on the Teams. Most significant is taking the "competition" out of the event and the fact that the Architectural CADD Cup, at least as a kind of seal of approval, goes to every participant who completes the building, not just to one winner.

This means that the event, still a challenge to actually do that building in only three hours, becomes more of an educational forum to demonstrate the architectural design software in the way each different CADD program uniquely needs to be presented. The Design Shootout becomes the structural framework to do that demonstration equitably, and is the only such venue in the world to guarentee some 35 minutes of the exclusive attention of the audience to each particular CADD software, with almost half that time broadcast worldwide as a webcast.

The challenge also returns more to its strong roots - where architects, not companies, showed off their favorite software - by encouraging and sponsoring user groups of architects in addition to inviting the CADD software developers. The architects who come forward to do the demonstrations of their favorite software will be recognized for stepping up to the challenge of doing that building in three hours and so will gain the right to display the Cup seal, and the names of all the Teams in the event will be incribed on the Architectural CADD Cup. Every single Team member will recieve a certificate on completion of the event showing that achievement. The Design Shootout is also encouraging those user groups with special priviledges, freebees, and prizes from sponsors.

The fact that different CADD software has strengths in differing areas leads to the issue that trying to evaluate or rank them based on specific drawings or criteria is inequitable, so starting this year the Design Shootout does not do that. It establishes a framework for a challenge but then it lets each CADD program shine as it needs to. The only evaluations will be the individual jurors comments.

Thus to the Teams and to the developers of CADD software the Design Shootout this year will seem very different. To the observing architects who are evaluating what software to get, though, the event will seem the same, probably better. They were primerily interested in that side by side building charrette and the presentations about the design projects and the software, not in the evaluation points or voting. To them, the event will be better than ever, with a forum that presents their choices of what software to buy, presented by other architects who are passionate about their software.

For those who are indeed competitive, and to draw in experts in various CADD packages worldwide, the related Web Challenge will post tutorials done in the various packages. The tutorials will show how to do various components of the building problem given previously in the Designers 3D CAD Shootout, in each specific software. Designers are challenged to submit their faster or better versions of how to do those components in each software, for fun, recognition, and for profit. The Web Challenge thus invites the "audience" to participate, generates even more publicity of a continual nature for the Designers 3D CAD Shootout, ensures that every single CADD software is represented, and becomes a public resource for tutorials.

http://www.architecturalcadd.com/cup/webchallenge.htm

The Designers 3D CAD Shootout for Architectural CADD Systems (called the Design Shootout for short) is a demonstration event sponsored by A/E/C SYSTEMS, Architectural CADD Consultants, and the Boston Society of Architects. Architects are challenged to use the CADD software of their choice to develop a building project in virtual reality in only three hours while an audience watches. CADD experts will referee and a jury of architects will write comments. Bricsnet ProjectCenter will host the drawing images on their Web extranet online.

April 14, 2000

The Design Shootout transforms into more of a demonstration event rather than a competition

New evaluation proceedures for 2000

Since the main purpose of this event is to serve as an educational venue to see how architects work in each of the design software (CADD) packages side by side, we are shifting emphasis to more of a demonstration as opposed to a "competition".

The jury of architects will post their comments on each Teams work and software, but will not grade or rank the various Teams. To emphasize this difference for 2000 we have taken the ranking bar charts off of the web sites for previous years of the Design Shootout. Thus, with no way to "loose" other than not having a Team in the event, we are encouraging architects to help show off their favorite CADD software packages.

A related demonstration is the new Web Challenge, which is open to everyone, after this years Design Shootout.

February 28, 2000

What happened to the Vignettes ? What is this about two Teams with each CADD ? What is a "web-cast" ? ------ See the answers to these and many other questions in our QandA section.

Even before the official invitations had gone out, we have seven different groups proposing Teams for the Designers 3D CAD Shootout 2000

January 7, 2000

Preparation for the 5th Designers 3D CAD Shootout, which will be the first week of June 2000 in Washington DC, is already underway. We are currently still at a point where we are actively incorporating suggestions so fee free to comment in our forum.

See our comments on a few minor changes below.

We are thrilled that A/E/C SYSTEMS has already arranged for the 2000 Design Shootout competition to be "webcast" live to the whole world, so that it truely does become architecture as a spectator sport.

We plan to incorporate extranets into our competition - at least as a way to host the drawings as results following the webcast - and are currently looking for an extranet provider sponsor.

Change - Two Teams Representing Each Software

One significant change is that we are strongly considering a modification to the rules and allowing two Teams for each software solution - one a group directly from the software developer, and the other a user group or school sponsored entry. This would give each software developer more security that their software would look good, and not be a victim of poor and hasty design decisions or computer meltdowns. It would also ensure that architects would see, in the competition, all the design software they need to see - as the user groups and school representation will guarentee that all software is represented, even if the software developer cannot get a Team together.

We had to check to see if the Deed of Gift would allow for this change of allowing two changes. In our interpretation, Article 5 does state that the Challenger of Record is the software developer for that CADD software, and Article 7 states that each Team will have three Team members, however, the number of Teams in the Competition is not restricted, nor is it stated that there be only one Team for each software. The practice of only one Team for each software has been stated in the rules for each competition starting in 1996 (when the software developer companies were not allowed to participate and only user groups were allowed). Thus, allowing a user group Team to compete on a "scollarship" basis actually helps us get back to the roots of what made this a great competition.

Vignettes

In 1996 and 1997, interviews with user group chairmen and CADD developer CEOs as well as computer system advice filled in the gaps in the running commentary during the design charrette portion of the competition. In 1998 and 1999 we replaced that with the Vignette Mini-Problems. This was an improvement as it first got us away from making any commentary, interviews, or advice that might show favortism in any way (i.e. we could not interview everybody in the limited time) and, secondly, it helped us evaluate the software in another way - where every Team had to solve the exact same problem. The fear was that Teams would simplify their building design to fit within what their software could do, and, if a software was incapable of doing more than a simple gable roof we may not discover that. We also did not want to reduce this competition to a mere drafing/modeling exercise by eliminating the main building design charrette (which, also, is a major exciting draw for our architect audience.) A major plus of the vignettes is that it helped to prevent Teams from going into monologues that sounded like sales demonstrations and kept them focused on showing us how their software solves specific problems. Sort of like the "required figures" in competition ice scating, the Teams hated the extra work, but they willingly do whatever we throw at them.

We feel, though, that in 1998 and 1999 the vignettes dominated the event too much, and did not allow us to see what the Teams were doing with their building design charrette enough. In 1998 the vignettes took the entire 3 hours, and in 1998 they were just shy of 2 hours. Thus, if we keep the vignettes for 2000, we would reduce the number and the ammount of time they take up even further.

Another, related issue, is that some Teams still greatly simplified their jobs with a simple rectangular building footprint. Perhaps having a required building footprint in the charrette would help, and making certain vignette problems an actual part of the design may help. In 1999 we gave all the vignette problems out to the competitors two weeks before the event to try and make them easier and go smoother in their presentations. In that case none of the vignettes could give away what the unknown main building design problem would be. It is interesting that, even knowing in advance that they needed to show us how their software can do a simple L shaped stair, some Teams actually stumbled on their presentations.

Requirements

Several of the required drawings and tasks have worked very well, notably :

A. Coordinated Plans, Sections, Elevations

B. 12 Perspectives (at least one of the required 3D detail)

C. The Best Two Renderings They Can Manage (not duplicating any previous views)

F. An Animation Sequence

G. A 10 Minute Presentation on the Design the Team did

K. A 2D Detail Section

In fact that new 2D Detail Section requirement worked very very well.

However, a few of the requirements have met with rather limited success :

H. A Composite View of the Finished Building Overlaid on a Photograph of the Site

D. VRML - Virtual Reality Model for the Web

E. Special Feature Drawing/Presentation

I. DXF file and DWG file Versions or Translations of the Project

J. Vignette Interview Mini-Problems

The fate of these final five requirements is open for discussion now. We would like to hear from past and potential future Teams as well as from practicing architects to know if these are truely relavant.

The composite view was produced by only two of the Teams in 1998, and while all but one of the Teams in 1999 managed the composite, they were all weak - with none being the kind of "publishable" stunning view we had hoped for. Since this requirement is at best peripheral to our design competition at present we may consider eliminating it.

We have found that almost all of the VRML models produced so far are way too large to post to our web site. The requirement for VRML (or equivalent) does indeed help set this particular competition different from others in the past, so we are very reluctant to loose this. Also, as web bandwidth is improving, having VRML or whatever to explore will help encourage continual visitors to the results.

The Special Feature drawing was moved to Vignette B of the competition. It was not always clear exactly what the Teams were showing us, and it becomes difficult to compare apples and oranges (i.e. is it better to have a post and beam construction ability or cost analysis ?) so, we need a way to find out these special things in each software - but if they are not "graded" on something a Team will not want to spend time showing us something. Suggestions are needed on this point.

The DXF/DWG issue, and , in general, the whole issue of file compatibility and transfer, whether via IFC classes, 3DS files, or whatever, is an enormously important issue to the architect audience evaluating the software the Teams are using. In at least two years, we specifically asked for Teams to discuss their compatibility levels in their presentations or interviews. We have also given them the site each year in various file formats. Delivering DXF or DWG files after the competition, though, has been a problem. In several cases the files were too big or interconnected to do in a reasonable time frame. Also, opening up the files and evaluating how much really got through has not been possible within the current period for recording grade scores. So far, two potential competitors actually have dropped out of the competition in the past specifically because they could not meet this requirement.

Extranets

Hosting the Design Shootout Web site currently costs about $ 450 per month, as there are a minimum of 25,000 hits per week with many of those people looking at many of the results drawings (many megabytes), all of which is larger than most commercial corporate web sites. At the same time, there are numerous new architectural project extranet site providers anxious to get architects to experience how their extranet services work. Thus, there is an obvious advantage on both sides for one of those extranet providers to sponsor a web site where all the results drawings can be hosted. We are open to any possibilities and suggestions.

Architecture as Spectator Sport  There are Teams of architects you can watch on an enormous projection system as they try to design a challenging building project and do all the plans, sections, elevations, perspectives, renderings, animations, and more all in only 3 hours. The 1997 the Teams were AllPlan, Arch+ / ConceptCAD, ArchiCAD, ArchiTECH.PC, Architrion, AutoArchitect / AutoCAD, BuildersCAD, DataCAD, DenebaCAD, Microstation TriForma, MiniCAD, and ARRIS  Learn more in 1 fun day than you can from months of research, consultants, and CAD salesmen.

This event is designed specifically for architects who are trying to decide on what CAD software they should use - whether they are re-evaluating, trying to decide whether to upgrade their existing, or start with CADD software.  It is an educational event, that is also designed to be entertaining, where you can also learn very speedy techniques, why and how to use 3D CADD modeling for architectural production, and a number of design techniques.

See a blow by blow description of how the MiniCAD Team won in 1997 by Diehl Graphsoft